Domitius was forty years old when he married Agrippina, and the young
Nero was not born till nine years afterwards. Whatever there was of
possible affection in the tigress-nature of Agrippina was now absorbed
in the person of her child. For that child, from its cradle to her own
death by his means, she toiled and sinned. The fury of her own ambition,
inextricably linked with the uncontrollable fierceness of her love for
this only son, henceforth directed every action of her life. Destiny had
made her the sister of one Emperor; intrigue elevated her into the wife
of another; her own crimes made her the mother of a third. And at first
sight her career might have seemed unusually successful, for while still
in the prime of life she was wielding, first in the name of her husband,
and then in that of her son, no mean share in the absolute government of
the Roman world. But meanwhile that same unerring retribution, whose
stealthy footsteps in the rear of the triumphant criminal we can track
through page after page of history, was stealing nearer and nearer to
her with uplifted hand.
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